The algebra and geometry of contact categories

Seminar/Forum

Contact categories, introduced by Ko Honda, are a type of cobordism category related to 3-dimensional contact geometry. Geometrically, they encode contact structures in an elementary combinatorial way. Algebraically, they are related to triangulated categories, A-infinity algebras, Floer homology, and other wholesome fun. In this talk I'll tell you something about them and report on some recent developments. No knowledge of contact geometry or topology will be assumed.